Speaker 1: You can change your hint. It's a skill, and you
Speaker 1: get them by practice. When you've got to practice in
Speaker 1: the right way. Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Dr b J. Fogg, Director of the Persuasive Tech Lab
Speaker 1: at Stanford University. A psychologist and innovator, his work empowers
Speaker 1: people to think clearly about the psychology of persuasion and
Speaker 1: then to convert those insights into real world outcomes. B
Speaker 1: J is the creator of the Fog behavioral model a
Speaker 1: new model of human behavior change. He is the author
Speaker 1: of Persuasive Technology, Using Computers to change what we think
Speaker 1: can do and co editor of Mobile Persuasion and Texting
Speaker 1: for Health. Fortune magazine. Selected b J. Fogg is one
Speaker 1: of the ten new Gurus you Should Know, and here's
Speaker 1: the interview with Dr b J. Fogg. Hi, b J.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm
Speaker 1: really excited to get you on because behavior change is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite subjects and you are one of
Speaker 1: the best known researchers and practitioners in that area. So
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to go into a little bit more
Speaker 1: detail with the listeners on um what's known as the
Speaker 1: Fog behavior model. But before we jump into that, we'll
Speaker 1: start like we always do, with the parable. There's a
Speaker 1: grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second. He looks up at his grandfather
Speaker 1: and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandfather says the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's the provocative. Actually hadn't heard that parable before us.
Speaker 1: I love. So my reaction is it? I think the
Speaker 1: one you see is the one you pay attention to.
Speaker 1: Not going to be my gut reaction. It's you know,
Speaker 1: the thing we really have limited in our lives is
Speaker 1: time and attention, and that just is you know, so
Speaker 1: you know, and it goes along, I guess in some
Speaker 1: ways with a meditation practice, the ability to focus on
Speaker 1: what you want to move forward and ignore the the distraction. Um,
Speaker 1: that's that's my response. So like and and in fact,
Speaker 1: so when my meditation practice, and I'm not great at meditation,
Speaker 1: but one of the practical uses of it is to
Speaker 1: be able to stay focused on word projects or people
Speaker 1: or you know, you're going out to dinner and you
Speaker 1: stay at the dinner and you stay focused with let's
Speaker 1: go in there, rather than being distracted. And I do
Speaker 1: think that there's a direct connection. Excellent, Well, let's let's
Speaker 1: dive into, um, what one of the things you're known for,
Speaker 1: which is the fog behavioral model. And at a basic level,
Speaker 1: it's really saying that in order for a person to
Speaker 1: achieve a certain behavior, change, to perform a certain behavior,
Speaker 1: they've got to be a combination of three things. Um,
Speaker 1: they've got to be sufficiently motivated, they have to have
Speaker 1: the ability to actually do the behavior, and then finally
Speaker 1: they need some sort of trigger to tell them to
Speaker 1: perform the behavior. At that point, if those three things
Speaker 1: aren't kind of happening at the same moment, the behavior
Speaker 1: won't happen. And one of the things that's great about
Speaker 1: that is that a lot of people I talked to,
Speaker 1: a lot of people I work with, and I think you,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you run into this all the time, have
Speaker 1: this idea that these are that whether we're able to
Speaker 1: change your behavior or not depends on our level of
Speaker 1: willpower or in a lot of cases even our own
Speaker 1: personal character. And um, it looks like you're showing that
Speaker 1: that's not the case. Well, you know, behavior is more
Speaker 1: than just motivation, you know. And so you did a
Speaker 1: great summary of by behavior model, and it's one of
Speaker 1: the elements, but it's not the whole. It's not the
Speaker 1: whole equation. And so what you sometimes you can design
Speaker 1: for motivation. Motivation is very slippery, It goes up and down.
Speaker 1: We have computing motivations UM. Whereas when you look at
Speaker 1: the other two factors in my model, ability and trigger.
Speaker 1: When you design to make something easier, it tends to
Speaker 1: be more robust UM design change or better investment, because
Speaker 1: if you make something easy to do, it doesn't usually
Speaker 1: suddenly you can come hard to do. And then certainly
Speaker 1: you've got a design for triggers. So usually when people
Speaker 1: kind of historically and traditionally when people talk about you know,
Speaker 1: behavior behavior changed, and really focused on motivation, even the
Speaker 1: phrase motivate thehavior change. And I think my work is
Speaker 1: an UM in kind of sharp relief to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: motivations a piece of it, but how about facilitate behavior
Speaker 1: change or trigger behaviors you want? And I think those
Speaker 1: are the things you designed for first and foremost, and
Speaker 1: that's where you really focus UM. And then you know,
Speaker 1: in my approach, the way I train people and you
Speaker 1: know innovators and also all the people and coaching in
Speaker 1: tiny habits, it's UM. You pick behaviors, you actually want
Speaker 1: to do, and that's where the motivation piece comes in.
Speaker 1: And don't don't think stuff you don't want to do,
Speaker 1: and then you have to like forge yourself to do stuff.
Speaker 1: That's that's not a long term success strategy, right, So
Speaker 1: let's dive into some of those pieces and a little
Speaker 1: bit more detail. I think motivation. You know, you've got
Speaker 1: some great writings on what the different types of motivators
Speaker 1: are all there are, and we can go into that,
Speaker 1: but let's maybe later, but let's talk right now about
Speaker 1: what ability is. What do you mean by having the
Speaker 1: ability to do an action? And can you give me
Speaker 1: some of the types of things that we might be
Speaker 1: missing or some examples of that. Yeah, well, you know,
Speaker 1: so you can think of it as a continuum easy
Speaker 1: to do and hard to do. And then the visual
Speaker 1: verse some of my behavior model. So people are listening
Speaker 1: to this thing, go to behavior model dot org and
Speaker 1: see the visual and the horizontal dimension is easy to
Speaker 1: do the hard to do. That's what I mean by ability.
Speaker 1: And there are three ways to think about making something
Speaker 1: easier to do. So if you're there's something you want
Speaker 1: to do, like they work out every day, um, there
Speaker 1: are ways to make that easier to do. One is
Speaker 1: to get trained, like increase your skill, so you know,
Speaker 1: lessons or some sort of training could make it easier
Speaker 1: to do. Another approach is to create a tool or
Speaker 1: resource to make it easier to do. In my own life,
Speaker 1: I've set up a little kind of CrossFit jim in
Speaker 1: my garage, which makes it a lot easier to do
Speaker 1: because it's right there and there in five seconds. Um.
Speaker 1: And then the third way is to actually scale the
Speaker 1: behavior back in some way, so rather than expecting yourself
Speaker 1: to work out for six minutes, work out for five
Speaker 1: things like that. So those are three ways to think
Speaker 1: about and walk through. Now, if you're designing for other people,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to get people to want to take
Speaker 1: courses or be trained, so that's not planning. Usually it's
Speaker 1: giving them a tooler resource that will make the behavior
Speaker 1: easier to do. That's usually the one when you're designing
Speaker 1: for yourself for other people, that's the one that UM
Speaker 1: that I would focus on most and so um ability
Speaker 1: in this case you you actually I think break ability
Speaker 1: into six different potential areas to look at for that time, money,
Speaker 1: physical effort, brain cycles, which is like how how hard
Speaker 1: you have to think about it. Um right, social deviance,
Speaker 1: which is what do you mean by social deviance? Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's part of the simplicity factors. It means you
Speaker 1: if you're doing the behavior, makes you feel funny or odd,
Speaker 1: like you're being den and it's no longer simple. So
Speaker 1: for example, let's let's say I'm in my garage doing
Speaker 1: the CrossFit stuff and I take off my shirt and
Speaker 1: I think, oh, maybe my neighbors will walk by and
Speaker 1: see me and make, you know, think that we're gonna
Speaker 1: without a shirt like Rocky Elbow. Then it's like that's
Speaker 1: made that h your heart, that it's funny. You would
Speaker 1: pick that one out of the list. So there's six
Speaker 1: simplicity factors, and I've tentively scratched that one off the
Speaker 1: list because it also has a motivation. Yeah, as a
Speaker 1: motivational quality. It is it does have aspects of ability,
Speaker 1: but has aspects of motivation. So that's the one. If
Speaker 1: you're to come to my boot camp and work with
Speaker 1: me next week. For example, you I have a hand
Speaker 1: I like, I look, I removed this one. And let's
Speaker 1: really talk about the five, the five others and the
Speaker 1: one that you know you didn't get to in the list.
Speaker 1: Yet I call non routine, and what I mean by
Speaker 1: that it's the behavior causes you to break a routine
Speaker 1: that you already have. It's no longer simple. So if
Speaker 1: you want somebody to join a conference call for three minutes,
Speaker 1: but it intrudes on another meeting they have, it's no
Speaker 1: longer simple even though it's a three minute conference call.
Speaker 1: So you've got to look at how how behavior fits
Speaker 1: into your real everyday life, and you've got to design
Speaker 1: it sort of matches your routines rather than conflicting with
Speaker 1: your routines. Right, and I wish listeners and you can,
Speaker 1: as as you said, if you go out to any
Speaker 1: of your many websites, can see what this behavioral model
Speaker 1: looks like written now. But this isn't saying that people
Speaker 1: can't do anything that's hard. It's just that the harder
Speaker 1: it is to do, the more motivation you're going to
Speaker 1: have to have to do it. So those things have
Speaker 1: to have to those have to move in tandem together.
Speaker 1: So if it's really easy to do, you don't need
Speaker 1: a lot of motivation, but if you're making a big change,
Speaker 1: you need a lot more motivation. One of the things
Speaker 1: that you talk about that, I know, preach all the time.
Speaker 1: You call them baby steps. I talk about just breaking
Speaker 1: things down into the smallest possible things, start really really small,
Speaker 1: you know, abandon the all or nothing mindset. And you
Speaker 1: did a video about why baby steps can be so helpful.
Speaker 1: Can you give us the short version of why doing
Speaker 1: a very small version of a behavior? So say, for example, UM,
Speaker 1: we want to get to the point where we um,
Speaker 1: you know, look really muscular. Um, but we start out
Speaker 1: by doing fifteen push ups. You know, why is that
Speaker 1: a good strategy? Well, like you said, it's the behavior
Speaker 1: is hard to do. You have to have high levels
Speaker 1: of motivation to do it, and motivations very slippery, and
Speaker 1: it's going to be a time when the motivation flips
Speaker 1: and you won't do the behavior. Whereas if it's easy
Speaker 1: to do, motivation can be higher or model and so
Speaker 1: you're going to be able to do the behavior reliably.
Speaker 1: You know, takes that any steps and if you take
Speaker 1: as you succeed on baby steps. And there's really two
Speaker 1: things going on here. One is the small behavior, we'll
Speaker 1: call that a baby steps. That's one of the factors.
Speaker 1: The other one is as you feel successful and that's
Speaker 1: important in the whole baby steps approach. So as you
Speaker 1: do it and you feel successful, to think capital number one,
Speaker 1: the behavior gets easier to do the next time. So
Speaker 1: let's say you do five push ups one day. The
Speaker 1: next day, the five five push up is gonna be
Speaker 1: a little bit easier to do, um. Whereas if you
Speaker 1: took the big leap approach and did twenty five or
Speaker 1: fifty the next day, it's going to be harder to do.
Speaker 1: Thatt your sore UM. So that's one thing. As usually
Speaker 1: as you do there, it will get easier to do
Speaker 1: in the future for writers. And and then number two,
Speaker 1: as you feel successful at it, you get more encouraged.
Speaker 1: Your hope goes up, your fear goes down. In other words,
Speaker 1: your motivation naturally rises. So you've got both things going on.
Speaker 1: And that's you know, even though babies Steps it's kind
Speaker 1: of a cutesy little name, and people because of the
Speaker 1: movie What About Bob, and you know, the whole term
Speaker 1: baby I think they can discount the power of baby steps,
Speaker 1: but it's it's really kind of amazing to see the
Speaker 1: power of it. So it's people take smaller steps and
Speaker 1: feel successful, things get easier to do when their motivation
Speaker 1: naturally goes up, which means over time they can do
Speaker 1: harder and harder things. So it ramps you up to
Speaker 1: be able to do the harder thing without uh, without
Speaker 1: you know, the risk of Wow, I did fifty plush
Speaker 1: us and now tomorrow I'm super sore, and so I'm
Speaker 1: either going to really hurt myself, I'm gonna be painful,
Speaker 1: or I'm just going to not do it. So that's
Speaker 1: the big leaf approach, which I do not advocate, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's one of the biggest causes,
Speaker 1: you know, in my limited experience of you know, failed
Speaker 1: behavior change in my own life and people around me,
Speaker 1: is trying to start out with too much UM. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think the other thing, for some reason is,
Speaker 1: you know, even when you don't call it baby steps,
Speaker 1: people seem to rebel against this idea because they think
Speaker 1: it seems silly, like that's not going to do any good,
Speaker 1: you know, like well doing walking for five minutes, that
Speaker 1: isn't gonna make any big difference to my health. But
Speaker 1: I recently read something of yours which I thought was
Speaker 1: really UM is something that that I've noticed, but I
Speaker 1: certainly have never said it as well as you did,
Speaker 1: which is what's the importance of You talk about the
Speaker 1: importance of doing a habit, even if it's a very
Speaker 1: small amount of it. So you were describing a month
Speaker 1: in which you got really busy and so you were
Speaker 1: unable to exercise as often or as much, but you
Speaker 1: talk about why it was so critical that you even
Speaker 1: did a little bit of it. So why is that?
Speaker 1: And the tiny habits method is like keeach people the method,
Speaker 1: and as we train coaches to use the method, one
Speaker 1: of the analogies we use is, you know, a habit
Speaker 1: is like a little plan it and what you're doing
Speaker 1: with you as your great the habit is you want
Speaker 1: the plant to take root. You wanted to, you know,
Speaker 1: to firmly be in the ground and then you can
Speaker 1: grow it bigger. Now, once you have a habit, the
Speaker 1: key is to keep it alive. You just don't want
Speaker 1: it to die. And as long as you keep it alive,
Speaker 1: you still have the habit. And so in May, my
Speaker 1: I had a crazy, crazy schedule of teaching, finishing up
Speaker 1: some stuff at Stanford, doing a bunch of stuff in industry,
Speaker 1: and my normal full size exercise habit. I just couldn't
Speaker 1: get that done with all the travel and all the
Speaker 1: responsibilities that I did do really tiny versions of it.
Speaker 1: In other words, I kept that little plant alive. I
Speaker 1: kept the roots connected in the soil. Because then when
Speaker 1: my circumstances changed, when I had time again, I was
Speaker 1: back to normal stuff, you know, the habit re emerged,
Speaker 1: the full habit. I didn't feel bad or guilty about
Speaker 1: not doing the full course of exercise I normally like
Speaker 1: to do. Instead, I congratulate myself, like, good for you,
Speaker 1: even though your schedule is crazy, you kept the habit alive.
Speaker 1: You kept this And I really do think of this
Speaker 1: little plant and I just can't shrivel up and die.
Speaker 1: I just keep us alive because that means it will
Speaker 1: come back. Yeah, and you you retain some of that
Speaker 1: momentum and motivation, you know when I always have noticed
Speaker 1: when you when I ended a dead stop on something,
Speaker 1: you know, once I'm not have no momentum. It is
Speaker 1: so hard to get started. Whereas to your point, as
Speaker 1: long as I've got a little bit of it going,
Speaker 1: it's easier to grow it. But boy, that that starting
Speaker 1: from nowhere is a hard point, which is why like
Speaker 1: tiny habits or baby steps is so important is because
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's sort of the walk before you
Speaker 1: run thing almost sometimes, I think, and I think it
Speaker 1: also has an impact on an identity, how you think
Speaker 1: about yourself. If you completely stop exercising, you'll think, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm the kind of person who doesn't exercise. If you
Speaker 1: do three to five minutes of exercating the hotel room
Speaker 1: before you go, you know, teach to the big company,
Speaker 1: then still in your mind and it's like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: the kind of person that exercises, you know, even when
Speaker 1: I'm really busy. Right. And so even though it's a
Speaker 1: small act or small behavior, I think it affects how
Speaker 1: you see yourself and that affects a bunch of other
Speaker 1: things in your life because you tend to behave in
Speaker 1: ways that are consistent with your identity, and so you
Speaker 1: really do want to do behaviors that uh create and
Speaker 1: enforce the identity that will then lead you to the
Speaker 1: outcomes what you want. Yep. And I think that that's
Speaker 1: such a key point is that I often, you know,
Speaker 1: talk with people who say, well, I'm the kind of
Speaker 1: person who always starts something and then doesn't issue or
Speaker 1: I'm the kind of you know, I'm the one that
Speaker 1: started exercising fifty different times and every time I stop
Speaker 1: and and I really I think that idea of not
Speaker 1: tying too tightly to that I'm that type of person
Speaker 1: because so much of this, which your model makes clear,
Speaker 1: is about do we have the right strategies in place?
Speaker 1: Are we approaching it right. It's not a character issue.
Speaker 1: It's a motivation ability to trigger issue. And now back
Speaker 1: to the interview with b J. Fogg. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about triggers. So what what do you mean by triggers
Speaker 1: and what are some you know, examples of good triggers
Speaker 1: that you've seen versus maybe bad ones or or less
Speaker 1: effective ones would be the word that. Yeah, in my model,
Speaker 1: a trigger is the prompter reminder. It's the prompt, it's
Speaker 1: the reminder, it's the thing that just do this behavior now.
Speaker 1: And the problem a lot of people have is they
Speaker 1: don't they're not clear about what their trigger is. And again,
Speaker 1: the trigger is not the motivator, but it's the cut
Speaker 1: then go to the gym and start working out, or
Speaker 1: it's the cut to you know, put an apple in
Speaker 1: your backpack or what have you. And so getting specific
Speaker 1: about what's going to prompt or remind me to do
Speaker 1: this behavior and you're designed for it. So unlike traditional
Speaker 1: approaches and behavior behavior change where it's dependent where the
Speaker 1: people think about as motivation willpower, I think the behavior
Speaker 1: change as a design issue, in other words, designed the trigger,
Speaker 1: designed to make the behavior easier to do. It's a
Speaker 1: lot more like decorating room or rearranging your office. Then,
Speaker 1: um well, it's a lot like that because you're trying
Speaker 1: to step out, you're designing, and you're seeing if all
Speaker 1: the pieces that they don't, you just redesign it. I
Speaker 1: have lots of ways to trigger, like I'll run through
Speaker 1: a few quickly, putting things on your calendar under a
Speaker 1: calendar Germans like even our chat today, you know, so,
Speaker 1: um it was on the calendar. I'm I'm a pretty
Speaker 1: big fan of to do lists as a trigger. Get
Speaker 1: something to do list, I'll probably either get it done
Speaker 1: or I'll schedule it to be done. I am not
Speaker 1: a fan of post it notes for certain for habits anyway,
Speaker 1: because I think that doesn't scale. If you're working, you
Speaker 1: know eventually you've got many many habits, and if you're
Speaker 1: relying on post it notes ever, I just don't think
Speaker 1: that's a good approach instead. And in the Tiny Habits method,
Speaker 1: I have people identify a routine they already do to
Speaker 1: be I call it an anchor. To be the problem,
Speaker 1: you anchor it to something you already do. So perhaps
Speaker 1: as soon as I will in my own life, as
Speaker 1: soon as I see my spam folder, that's my trigger
Speaker 1: to meditate. And it took me a long time to
Speaker 1: figure out where meditation fit in my day and what
Speaker 1: was going to be the trigger. But after you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of trial and error, that's the time. So
Speaker 1: as soon as that last email goes out on my
Speaker 1: my spam folder, it's clear it's empty, that's that's the
Speaker 1: thing that reminds me, ah to meditate now in my
Speaker 1: oh my, I mean, other people can be triggers, and
Speaker 1: not just people animals. And so let me tell you
Speaker 1: something I did. And I was training some people at
Speaker 1: Stamford Healthcare last week and then the training, uh, we
Speaker 1: all were like talking about changing her behavior. And I said, okay, great,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna play with my dog every morning. I'll throw
Speaker 1: the ball. She loves the ball, and so i'd take
Speaker 1: her out the door and I pulled out her little
Speaker 1: ball and he played. Next day, I did it again,
Speaker 1: and on day three, even if I didn't remember to
Speaker 1: get the ball, he was a look an upward. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So she learned it within two days, and then she
Speaker 1: became my trigger to get the ball if I happen
Speaker 1: to forget. So, you know, the dog looking up and
Speaker 1: jumping towards the ball on the patio shelves is a trigger.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, yeah, we're gonna play ball this morning.
Speaker 1: Well that turned out to be a little bit of
Speaker 1: a monster. I'm going off beside hand because now any
Speaker 1: time I walk outside with her, she expects me to
Speaker 1: play ball with her. You know, my attention was just
Speaker 1: in the morning, So I have to kind of undo that,
Speaker 1: have it a little bit in her, and I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I'm going to do that. That's so funny. I've
Speaker 1: got a little dog who is the exact same way.
Speaker 1: I think. All she thinks about is that ball. And
Speaker 1: any time I walk in the kitchen where the ball is,
Speaker 1: you know, she is right there looking, you know, like
Speaker 1: she just her trigger seems to be constant. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about You say that successful triggers have
Speaker 1: three characteristics. So um, you know, first, as we noticed
Speaker 1: the trigger. I mean, one of the challenges I had
Speaker 1: right is if I put something up as like a
Speaker 1: reminder to come up on my computer. I have allowful
Speaker 1: lot of those, so sometimes I just don't notice him anymore. Um.
Speaker 1: The second is that you say you associate it with
Speaker 1: a specific behavior. And then finally, and I think this
Speaker 1: is another great one, is that the trigger happens when
Speaker 1: we are both motivating and able to perform the behavior.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I get a trigger, I get a reminder to
Speaker 1: do something at the moment that I can't do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's not helpful, and that's just frustrating. So people
Speaker 1: are looking or kind looked at the behavior model with
Speaker 1: it the curve line on it. If you get triggered
Speaker 1: when you're below the line, and I call it the
Speaker 1: action line, that beings either you're it was too hard
Speaker 1: to do, or you didn't have motivations to or combination
Speaker 1: in either case, when you're triggered and you can't do
Speaker 1: the page you don't want to, that does not lead
Speaker 1: to a good outcome. So you really don't want the
Speaker 1: trigger going off when you are you can't do it
Speaker 1: for at a moment that you're not motivated to do it,
Speaker 1: because you're going to be more likely to ignore it
Speaker 1: right the next time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you'll you'll ignore
Speaker 1: it or it'll either frustrate you or annoy you. And
Speaker 1: in some cases, I was wearing a lotch from a
Speaker 1: certain company and I was driving along on the highway
Speaker 1: and the watch happened me and said stand up. Now
Speaker 1: It's like, so it's triggering me to stand up, but
Speaker 1: I'm driving and so it So not only was that
Speaker 1: a little bit, well, it's funny, but let's imagine that
Speaker 1: happened over and over. The annoying but also hurts the
Speaker 1: credibility of the system. I think. So if you create
Speaker 1: some sort of product or service that triggers people at
Speaker 1: a long time, then I just think that that's not
Speaker 1: good for the brand. It's not just for the product
Speaker 1: and so on. So the timing of the trigger matters
Speaker 1: a lot. You described having a pretty crazy schedule, right.
Speaker 1: Triggers work for me pretty well in routine, right When
Speaker 1: in routine, it's pretty straightforward. When when everything is chaotic,
Speaker 1: how do you work to redesign your triggers or are
Speaker 1: certain things habitual enough at that point that you remember
Speaker 1: to do them, or how do you deal with that? Well,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about habits, there's a class of habits
Speaker 1: I call super habits, and super habits are the things
Speaker 1: you do all the time, regardless of the context. Brushing
Speaker 1: our teeth, going to bed, eating breakfast and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And so those those habits endure even if I'm you know,
Speaker 1: in Seattle or Boston or you know, hiking. Um. Then
Speaker 1: there's another Most habits are not super habits. They're very
Speaker 1: dependent on our context. So if we you know, so
Speaker 1: it's Monday and usually or at work, but we're taken
Speaker 1: it's a holiday, well the context is different. Your typical
Speaker 1: Monday habits probably aren't going to happen. But just that's
Speaker 1: fin of failure of will power, are motivation or not
Speaker 1: even behavior design, it's just how things work. And so
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of creating like Monday through Friday
Speaker 1: work habits, weekend habits, you may differentiate between Saturday and Sunday.
Speaker 1: And then also travel habits, so when you're on the road,
Speaker 1: a different set of habits. So you'll have your super habits,
Speaker 1: but then you'll have other habits you do when you travel,
Speaker 1: and don't expect your Monday through Friday work habits to
Speaker 1: automatically translate to travel because it's the context different. So
Speaker 1: you actually design a different set of habits with different triggers,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, So that's I think I'm more helpful
Speaker 1: way to think about it, knowing that you're outside your
Speaker 1: normal environment, and like there's certain things that I will
Speaker 1: do when I'm at a hotel that I don't do
Speaker 1: when I'm at home, And there's things I did at
Speaker 1: Stanford that I don't do when I'm more backing from home.
Speaker 1: And so just realizing the context is also a big
Speaker 1: part of what trigger this to do things. And so
Speaker 1: don't get down yourself if you you know, you go
Speaker 1: on vacation that you don't be your typical exercise, Well
Speaker 1: that's normal until you design a habit for that contact.
Speaker 1: That's just normal. It's not a personal failing. One of
Speaker 1: the things that you talk about with creating habits, you
Speaker 1: talk about how important celebration is. What what do you
Speaker 1: mean by that and why is it so critical? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Celebration is the something that you do. It's a skill,
Speaker 1: it's an act that you do to fire off a
Speaker 1: positive emotion, to make you feel positive emotion immediately. That's
Speaker 1: what I mean by celebration. It's almost like a self
Speaker 1: cheer or a way to spark like happiness or something
Speaker 1: positive inside of you instantly. And the reason that matters,
Speaker 1: and so that's this is part of the tiny habits technique.
Speaker 1: The reason it matters is your positive emotions. How make
Speaker 1: the behavior become more automatic. So if I well, let's
Speaker 1: take my little dog Millie. So I take the ball
Speaker 1: out on the patio. The first morning, I throw it,
Speaker 1: and she is so happy, she runs, gets the ball,
Speaker 1: brings it back. Well, that positive emotion starts wiring into
Speaker 1: her the anticipation to do the ball the next morning.
Speaker 1: In other words, emotions create habits, and so the celebration
Speaker 1: skill it's a hack, you know, like how do you
Speaker 1: hack your behavior? Well, you learned to fire up a
Speaker 1: positive emotion, so then when the opportunity comes to that
Speaker 1: behavior again, you'll remember to do it and you'll want
Speaker 1: to do it. So I'll just give you. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: if somebody is not flossing and they want to make
Speaker 1: flossing a habit, well, after they floss, when there's all
Speaker 1: their teeth or I'm a fan of this lossing one too,
Speaker 1: you then celebrate and you say good for me? Are
Speaker 1: you do a fist pump? For you do something goofy
Speaker 1: in the mayor to make yourself feel happy at that moment,
Speaker 1: because that's how you get your brain to want to
Speaker 1: do that behavior again. And so I call celebration. It's
Speaker 1: not a perfect word, it's about the best word I
Speaker 1: can come up with for that. That's all about. It's
Speaker 1: a hack. You're hacking your emotions in order to hack
Speaker 1: your behaviors. I know there's there's probably a long list,
Speaker 1: but just a couple that the big hitters off the
Speaker 1: list of bad approaches to change in our behavior. Oh wow. Well,
Speaker 1: one one case thing is to distinguish between outcomes and behaviors. UM.
Speaker 1: And you need to translate. And so the outcome might
Speaker 1: be a loose ten percent of my body way or
Speaker 1: you know, be able to do fifty pull ups or
Speaker 1: finish you know, a big report or something like. Those
Speaker 1: are all outcomes. You need to translate that into specific behaviors.
Speaker 1: What are the behaviors that I do to reach that outcome?
Speaker 1: So that step one uh and often UM overlooked. You've
Speaker 1: been designed for the behaviors. You can't design directly for
Speaker 1: the outcomes. Number two is probably being unrealistic about your
Speaker 1: motivation level and how it will tag. So when you
Speaker 1: are thinking about, oh, I want to lose weight, or
Speaker 1: I want to study harder, I want to write more,
Speaker 1: I want to practice more, in that moment that you're
Speaker 1: thinking that through or in the course or what have you,
Speaker 1: your motivation is high, at least higher than usual, and
Speaker 1: at that moment you feel like you really can do
Speaker 1: these behaviors because your motivation time and what people don't
Speaker 1: account for it tomorrow or a week from now or
Speaker 1: you know, thirty days from now, my motivation is going
Speaker 1: to tag and I'm not going to have I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna talk about this. So you've got to design an
Speaker 1: approach that accounts for the reality of motivation being very slippery.
Speaker 1: And then I think there's others. All this ends this
Speaker 1: one um. Just if you're looking at long term change.
Speaker 1: There's different kinds of behavior, somewhere one time and somewhere episodic.
Speaker 1: But if you're looking at long term change, if you're
Speaker 1: looking at some kind of outcome like being more productive
Speaker 1: or being healthy or reducing stress, those outcomes can be
Speaker 1: challenging and so as you work on different behaviors to
Speaker 1: achieve them. I think it's so important to just keep going.
Speaker 1: So if you fall off the wagon, or if you
Speaker 1: mess up or you don't, it's not even messing up.
Speaker 1: If you don't do what you're intended, don't make a
Speaker 1: big deal of it. Just take the next step, you know,
Speaker 1: just just just don't give up, and you know, don't
Speaker 1: don't don't take it out on yourself, dunk it down
Speaker 1: yourself to say, hey, you just pick it up the
Speaker 1: next thing and keep going. One of my favorites that
Speaker 1: would go on a list like that is ambiguity, like
Speaker 1: not really knowing exactly what the behavior you're going to
Speaker 1: take is like I'm going to go to the gym
Speaker 1: and workout. Is you know I've given myself that before
Speaker 1: and you get there and or it's just harder to
Speaker 1: even get there because I don't know what I'm gonna do,
Speaker 1: what machines, how long. There's so many decisions to make
Speaker 1: that it's easy to not do it. Yeah, there's an
Speaker 1: interesting I haven't named this, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: anybody has named it, but the idea of this, as
Speaker 1: you can get very specific about the behavior, often the
Speaker 1: behavior will just happen on its own, without you designing
Speaker 1: the trigger or making it either just getting clear in
Speaker 1: your mind what the behavior can lead to actually doing it.
Speaker 1: Not in all cases, but um, it's surprising how that
Speaker 1: dynamic works. And so yeah, that's clarity about what exactly
Speaker 1: is the behavior that I'm going to be doing. I
Speaker 1: can have a piuse full effect. Excellent. Well, b J,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for taking the time. I think I
Speaker 1: could probably continue to have this conversation for hours, but
Speaker 1: I know you're busy and I appreciate you taking the
Speaker 1: time to talk with us. We will have links in
Speaker 1: the show notes to uh some of your various different websites,
Speaker 1: to the tiny habits, to the behavior model, etcetera. So
Speaker 1: thanks again, great, thanks for talking, great questions, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, just keep up the good work. It's it's
Speaker 1: really important that people understand how behavior works and that
Speaker 1: they move forward because like you can change your behavior,
Speaker 1: it's a skill and you get there by practice. But
Speaker 1: you've got to practice in the right way. And I
Speaker 1: applaud you for shining a spotlight the better ways to
Speaker 1: do it. Excellent. Well, thanks so much, goodbye, all right bye.
Speaker 1: You can learn more about b J fogg and podcast
Speaker 1: at one. You feed dot net slash fog. That's f
Speaker 1: o g G